Classical philosophy and Darwinian biology are far more compatible than is usually assumed. In fact, looking at either from the standpoint of the other can enrich and deepen our appreciation of both. From a Darwinian point of view, the theories of Plato and Aristotle deserve to be taken very seriously. From the classical point of view, Darwinian biology is much less reductionist than its enemies suppose.

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Jesus v. Darwin

I have a copy of this cartoon
on the wall outside my office at Northern:

For several reasons I have been
thinking lately about the mutual hostility between conservatives (especially religious
conservatives) and Darwinists.The
proximate cause of the quarrel is obviously political.The two sides having drawn apart and against
one another almost a century ago, they now dislike each other because they
dislike each other.That is how politics
often (almost always) works.

This explains a curious fact
about the latter faction: the rare emphasis on a particular scientist.While both Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein were
certainly celebrated and influential and while both had their followers, as it
were, it is rare to speak of Newtonians let alone Newtonism, or to hear someone
described as a Relativist in the sense of Einstein.Yet we speak of Darwinists and Darwinians all
the time.

This is so, I suggest, for the
same reason as one speaks of Marxists or Lutherans for that matter.To announce one’s acceptance of Darwin’s
theory is a pledge of allegiance.There
is nothing especially wrong with this.We are political animals.This is
what we do.

There are deeper causes for the
quarrel, however, and they require explanation.Why did a hostility open up between Darwinian biology in particular and
Christian (an increasingly other Abrahamic religions) and why has it been so
persistent?Why is there much less
friction between religion and geology, for instance, or astronomy?Such sciences once got the philosopher Anaxagoras
expelled from Athens. Today, only young
earthers are offended by physics, and they are rather rare.

One reason has to do with the historical
moment at which Darwin’s theory appears.The Nineteenth Century was the period in which the center of gravity in
Western culture shifted decisively from religious authority to secular
authority, both in science and in government.Darwin’s achievement was neither the cause nor in any important sense a
consequence of that shift; however, because it coincided with it, it came to be
identified with it.

A second reason for the quarrel
is that religious thought in general and theology in particular had responded
to the rise of modern science with what I call the Olympian Strategy.The simple rule of this strategy is to
imagine that the God or gods dwell somewhere that one cannot easily look.An adolescent version of this strategy is to
imagine that angels live on the tops of clouds, which works reasonably well
until the invention of aircraft.Before
Darwin, it was tempting to suppose that while science could explain day and
night, the stars and the seasons, and volcanos, only a creator God could
explain the human eye or the wings of birds.I note that the Intelligent Design movement seems still to be trying to
sustain the Olympian Strategy.

While both of these
explanations are part of the story, I recently have come to think that
something more deeply rooted in the history of Biblical Religion is at
work.Pagan gods lived in the world, even if largely out of
sight and at high altitudes.The
Biblical God existed before the world that He created and therefore exists
outside that world, however much or often he intervenes in it.This separation of God from the world has
very important existential consequences.For pagans, the moon was a divine being, worthy of reverence and
awe.In Genesis, it is demoted to the
status of a street light, hung in the heavens by the Creator.Much the same thing is true of the sun.

The Biblical God’s jealousy
left no room for the vast population of gods, demigods, spirits, nymphs, etc.,
that had inhabited the ancient world.This by no means precluded admiration of the natural world.One could admire it as divine art in the same
way that one admires the arts of human beings.It did however, open up a persistent temptation to view that world with
contempt.Matter is mere matter, dead and inert, without spirit.

The power of this temptation is
evident from the wee small books towards the end of the New Testament.Consider 1st John 4:

What is that bit about Jesus
Christ “come in the flesh”?As explained
to me by a Biblical scholar (which I am not), the early church was infiltrated
by Gnostics.The latter believed that
the material world (and hence, the flesh) was corrupt and bad.If Jesus was indeed a savior, he could not
have come in the flesh but only in the form of an immaterial spirit.This teaching was resolutely rejected by the
Church.Christ was born of woman into
flesh and blood.When he rose he swung
his legs off the slab and walked out of the tomb.Why else was it necessary to roll away the
stone?

There is a lot to chew on here.All the major churches teach the resurrection
of the body, which acknowledges that human being is unthinkable apart from
human bodies.This view rather literally
redeems the flesh.I suggest, however,
that Christian culture has not entirely escaped the Gnostic infection.There remains a tendency to see the flesh and
more the material components of flesh as low and ugly.This explains the fact that today, most
American Christians seem to be thorough going substance dualists.They imagine, against church doctrine, that
the spirit is altogether distinct from the flesh and floats away from it at
death toward heaven or hell.The
resurrection of the body is largely forgotten in this gospel of Walt
Disney.

I suspect that it is a
lingering Gnosticism in Christian culture that is offended by Darwinism.From this point of view, if living organisms,
including human beings, emerge by natural processes from inorganic matter, then
life is corrupt beyond redemption.

There is an alternative
view.If the world is God’s creation,
then every part of it, down to the smallest particle, has God’s design in
it.The philosopher Hans Jonas argued
that Darwinism was in fact the antithesis of materialism.It means that life, mind, and spirit are
potentially present even the most inert physical materials.This is evident in every living human being,
for living persons are made of living organs which are made of living cells
which are made of dead molecules.The resurrection
of the dead is not something that happens (perhaps not only) on some coming
day.It happens at every breath.

I do not take sides in the
quarrel between religion and Darwinism because I think that the quarrel arises
from a mistake.The quarrel will subside
when we learn to take a more generous view of the natural world.Nothing in it is irredeemable.